India is gearing up for the annual “Durga Puja’ festival that celebrates the Hindu Goddess Durga, worshipped by her devotees as the mother of the universe for her graciousness and fearsome power.

Her idols will soon be placed in homes and elaborate community shrines, with paths leading up to them lined with flowers and echoing with devotional chants.

“So, she (Goddess Durga) is taken in this form and then we will be dressing her, we will be singing for her, we will be dancing," said Amrita Gooptu, a devotee in New Delhi. "We will be regaling her with, you know, everything we want to show her and her family."

Durga Puja is the biggest festival for India’s Bengali community and is marked by the installation of huge, elaborately decorated images of the goddess, with feasts, music and dance to celebrate the victory of good over evil.

The festival also celebrates Durga as the feminine divine, venerated for her triumph over the mythological demon Mahishasura.

Traditional idol-makers in Kolkata, the capital city of West Bengal state, have been making an array of Durga images usually portrayed as a slaying goddess riding a lion, with Mahishasura crushed under her foot.

In a cluster of dimly lit temporary structures in the heart of New Delhi, artisans have been sculpting idols of Durga and the elephant-headed god Ganesh for the festival that begins later this week.

The colorful idols are made using traditional techniques by artisans who have inherited their sculpting skills through generations.

After molding and shaping the handcrafted idol with bamboo, clay and mud, it is painted in vibrant colors and later adorned with lavish clothes and sparkling jewels.

40-year-old Subir Pal, is a second-generation sculptor.

Pal and fifteen other workers have been racing to finish about sixty idols of Goddess Durga and other deities, which will be placed at temporary shrines across the city.

He said he feels very proud that people come to worship the idols made by him.

Ritual prayers with intoxicating drumbeats and fragrant incense smoke will venerate the mother goddess during the festival, after which the Durga idols will be ceremonially lowered into rivers or other bodies of water.

Durga Puja festival in West Bengal’s capital city Kolkata has been given UNESCO’s recognition as part of the “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity."

AP Video by Rishi Lekhi, Shonal Ganguly and Bikas Das